


Afflictions of Surprise

by ieroses



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, terrible puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 05:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1807879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ieroses/pseuds/ieroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson has the ability to make the brain of Sherlock Holmes rapidly short circuit. The Sherlock Holmes in question finds this ability quite distressing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afflictions of Surprise

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have a beta, so sorry for any mistakes.  
> Also, sorry for the jokes that will make you cringe but eh *shrugs*

Before Sherlock Holmes met John Watson, he was sure he had never needed the word 'oh' quite so much. It wasn’t even really a word, rather an accidental expression of surprise that sprang from his mouth without the action passing through the filters of his brain even once. Sherlock Holmes did not do things accidentally. Therefore, there were only two obvious conclusions.

 

The presence of one John Watson had caused a certain consulting detective to develop a rather serious mental disease that would surely consume his brain cells one by one until he was no better than, than, than _Anderson_. The horror.

 

That, or John Watson held the ability of mind control.

 

Either way, there was of course a very simple solution to Sherlock's problem: get rid of John. But for some unknown and illogical reason, the entire prospect was unacceptable to every cell of the geniuses mind.

 

Either John was very thorough in his ability to crawl his way into the crevices of Sherlock's brain or Sherlock's tumour was clearly much more serious than he had originally thought. Something had to be done.

 

The first approach to take was obviously to check one of the two options off.

 

"Molly," Sherlock said, seriously, as soon as John had left the lab with some silly albeit convenient nonsense about catching up with Mike, "I need you to organize a brain scan."

 

"For who?"

 

"Me."

 

Molly looked vaguely shocked, eyebrows raised and mouth tilted down in a confused frown, and Sherlock refrained from rolling his eyes. It probably wouldn't help his case, after all.

 

"Why do you need a brain scan?"

 

"Because I think I have a brain tumour."

 

This time Molly's face fell with worry and Sherlock gritted his teeth to keep a straight face with the sheer tediousness of it all.

 

"What could possibly make you think that?"

 

This was the moment, thought Sherlock, this was the moment where you had no choice but to utterly humiliate yourself. But it was okay, because the end result would be a brain scan that would prove his leaking stupidity was the result of science; it was completely out of his control.

 

"Because John keeps... Surprising me."

 

There was a pause where Molly’s eyebrow twitched and she blinked. “That’s it?”

 

Sherlock nodded firmly.

 

The face of his friend didn't change at all, as though her brain had failed to compute his words at first and had just held up a finger to her facial muscles to say 'give us a minute, would you, we need to check this over again quickly'. Sherlock thought this a fairly apt reaction, until the girl burst out in laughter. Then he frowned.

 

"This isn't funny. I could be _dying_."

 

"You don't have a brain tumour, Sherlock," she said around giggles.

 

"How do you know? The only other explanation I can come up with is... is _mind control_!"

 

"Mind control," Molly said flatly. Sherlock waited for a more appropriate reaction this time, only for Molly to burst into more fits.

 

This was the moment John chose to arrive again, in something more of a rush which stopped abruptly upon entering. Sherlock whirled around to meet his eyes which were flickering between the detective and Molly, who was still clutching her stomach with one hand over her mouth to stifle laughter.

 

Sherlock zoned in on the folder between his hands.

 

"What's that?"

 

John seemed startled, as though Sherlock ignoring the oddness of the situation was odd in itself. Sherlock clenched his hands together behind his back in a desperate attempt to ignore the urge to snap at the over flowing levels of idiocy which apparently felt the need to radiate from all corners of the lab.

 

"Oh, this. Well I was in Mike's office and I found it in his stacks of folders. Something about decomposition and formaldehyde solution? I thought we were dealing with something like that. But then you hadn't mentioned formaldehyde yet, and it was only when I saw it that I thought _'yes, of course!_ ' So I brought you the folder so you could see."

 

John walked toward the lab table where he held out the folder towards his friend. Sherlock stared at him like he'd just picked the sun out of the sky and said 'look, see, it's obviously round!' Instead of voicing such a revelation, Sherlock's mouth simply opened with an involuntary ' _oh_ '.

 

He made a mental note to reprimand his brain for the slip up later, however with the currently rebellious state of his mind, he frowned to realise that his brain would probably intentionally rub it off the calendar. That, or John would wipe it off for him.

 

Meanwhile, his currently active area of brain was reprimanding current him for being so totally and utterly stupid for missing such an obvious, _obvious_ clue. The body wasn't caked with the chemical yet, the killer having been interrupted or disturbed, but all the preparations were there. This only meant that in order to find the serial killer, they would have to search for members within the school who would have access to supplies of such chemicals. Obvious. And yet it had been John to lead him to it. 

 

Sherlock eyed the doctor warily but subtly as they quickly put thoughts into action, although soon the case took over and John's mind abilities were pushed further to the back of Sherlock's head to be dealt with later.

 

*

 

Two weeks passed, and after Molly had finally pulled some strings with her friends at the hospital, Sherlock was disappointed to find that he had no glaring brain tumours. In fact, his brain was perfect. John, Sherlock thought, must be very talented in the art of getting inside another person's head, to not leave any trace of himself behind.

 

Except he obviously had, just in such a way that wasn't obvious over the glaring lights that shone through the brain scan. Because Sherlock thought about John. Sherlock thought about John a lot. Like, _all_ the time.

 

It was getting increasingly distressing, especially when he realised that the presence of the podgy doctor also led his brain to using such cringeworthy linguistic fillers as 'like' to front an irregular sentence. Perhaps he should consider gaining a second opinion about the brain scan.

 

Meanwhile, John just kept getting worse. Or better. Or a mix of everything inside Sherlock that made him want to crush the doctor into a ball and throw him out the window from sheer frustration, all the way up to bundling the blonde up inside protective sheets and hiding him away inside Baker Street, where the front door would have a sign permanently attached to it which announced that 'Dr John Watson was now property of one Sherlock Holmes, and anyone who wished to dispute that may kindly piss off'. It was a peculiar mix, to say the least.

 

Such emotions spouted from all things. From the horrifically domestic, like when John walked in on Sherlock cooking up several chemicals and more than one body part inside the one pan that had been dubbed 'The Cooking Only Pan ,That Means No Sherlock'. Sherlock had expected the doctor to shout or at least be slightly miffed. Instead, John had just shook his head, amused if exasperated smile on his face, while he called from the living room, "You're buying a new one."

 

Sherlock had prepared himself with an entire defensive argument for the oncoming onslaught, including charts and statistics as to why there were no other pans left to use, but without the provocation to use them, he had been reduced to nothing but a blasted ' _oh_ '.

 

And then there were the less domestic times, such as when the two of them were being chased by a particularly psychopathic circus master and his painfully yellow clown accomplice. When John had thrown the two of them down to hide in hay by the side of the circus tent, only to be found two minutes later and held at gun point, all he had done was sigh and say, "now this is just funfair."

 

Apparently the ridiculous pun had been sufficient to make he clown laugh enough for the gun to slacken, giving the ex-solider time to disarm and then retaliate. Sherlock had stood by, surprised at how quick it had happened, surprised at how much he wanted to laugh along with the joke, and surprised when John had come over to him once the police had arrived to go, "well that went plate-smashingly, don't you think?"

 

This time Sherlock frowned, at a loss. John remained hopeful. "Was that some reference to the supposedly entertaining act of spinning plates?" Sherlock asked.

 

John grimaced, saying, "bit not good?"

 

"Well, since it is neither an apt analogy nor was is cleverly executed, I would say no, not good."

 

The two settled into silence as they followed the train of leaving policemen towards the fair outside the circus. 

 

"However," Sherlock hedged, "it would be unfair of me to say that your terrible sense of humour has been a hindrance today. Or should I say _funfair_?"

 

There was a beat where John glanced up at Sherlock's cocked eyebrow and amused smirk, and then the two fell into an unstoppable fit of laughter that Sherlock was sure he had never experienced without the presence of John. Therefore, it would not be far fetched to assume that it was a happiness forcefully implemented by whatever power John held over his head. Or, more accurately, in his head.

 

Sherlock decided that if all John was going to do with his fancy power was make the detective laugh, then he would be more than happy to be the other man's subject.

 

And so the train of surprises and shocks and _oh_ 's continued.

 

Every time, Sherlock lost a little more of his head, until he didn't mind so much anymore.

 

*

 

"Sherlock, you weren't paying attention when I went out to get dinner, so I didn't know what to get you. I got us Chinese instead, okay? I know it's your favourite."

 

Sherlock watched as John pottered around the kitchen, getting plates and cutlery out of various, unusual places, such as, for instance, the microwave. He simply replied with, "oh," because John knew what his favourite food was, and no one else had ever noticed something so mind-bogglingly irrelevant before.

 

*

"Sherlock," John said one day as he stared into the fridge. The detective glanced nervously over the top of his microscope, already prepared for what John was going to be angry about. Instead of even looking back at his flat mate, John reached towards the top shelf and said, "if you're going to put a bag of eyeballs in the fridge, then put them on the bottom shelf so they don't leak all over everything else."

 

"Oh," Sherlock said, and then, "Okay." Then Sherlock stared in half awe, half shock, half amazement as John moved the bag and continued to grab the milk as though everything were totally domestic and normal. Too much of his brain found itself focused on the humming blonde to even care that he'd just implied that there was 150% worth of himself. Because John had stopped caring that keeping eyeballs in the fridge was strange.

 

 

 

"Sherlock," John called as he poked his head around the door of the abandoned building, "I think I may have caused a problem."

 

"Oh?" Sherlock asked, as he twisted away from the entirely elegant and incredibly fascinating dust patters along the floor to face the doctor.

 

John was looking down sheepishly, until he nodded his head in the direction toward the other side of the deserted house.

 

With furrowed eyebrows, Sherlock straightened up and walked towards the room John had indicated. As soon as he entered the doorway, his footsteps came to a stuttering halt. Slowly, John joined him at his side.

 

"Oh," Sherlock said, because _oh_.

 

"I know it looks bad," John hurried to explain, "but he's not dead. He just passed out from the blood."

 

Sherlock frowned. "A murderer who can't stand the sight of blood."

 

"Well, his murder weapon was poison. It's a fairly bloodless weapon."

 

"Ugh, heartless," Sherlock muttered, and then tried to suppress the laughter bought on by John's sudden fits of it.

 

After the two had calmed, Sherlock felt the need to define the situation, because he still couldn't quite wrap his head around it. "So you... knocked out the man we're looking for?"

 

"Well," John shrugged, "he wasn't very nice man."

 

As the door downstairs burst open with the entrance of Lestrade and his posse of Scotland Yarders, Sherlock chuckled along with John.

 

"We both really need to stop with the jokes," John said as he straightened his jacket.

 

"Agreed," Sherlock said, but inside he was still grinning as Lestrade arrived with a shocked look at the bleeding man and a wail of, "what the fuck happened here?"

 

The detective and his blogger shared a knowing smile as Lestrade pretended to have no idea what happened so as not to arrest either of them, and Sherlock realised he wouldn't be nearly as grateful for it if it weren't John being protected.

 

*

 

It had taken almost twenty seven years of Sherlock’s life to decide precisely what it was that make his brothers smirk so incredibly, deliciously punch-worthy. Since then he had often spent most of their interactions focusing his energy on ignoring it, finding that it was an appropriately distracting activity to ignore the actual content of the interactions themselves.

 

What it was, Sherlock decided, was the slight upward tilt at a peculiarly exact forty-five degree pointed angle, that screamed dull superiority of knowledge, status and, ironically in some kind of paradoxical, fabricated way, superiority of morals. It was the smirk which sneered ‘I know something you don’t’.

 

Since Mycroft Holmes lived with the number one rule of compartmentalizing every aspect of his life, this meant there was always something he knew that everyone else didn’t. The smirk was therefore a permanent fixture, which left the younger Holmes to be subjected to it much more often than he would like.

 

“What are you and John up to?” Sherlock snapped from his leather chair.

 

Instead of scowling over the discovery of his mind-controlling scheme, the elder Holmes’ signature smirk only grew, infuriating the dark haired detective.

 

“I know what you’re playing at, Mycroft. I suggest you stop, soon, or I will be forced to take drastic measures.”

 

Mycroft scoffed, and Sherlock just glared harder, perhaps hoping that if the bore of his eyes was strong enough, the other Holmes might just burst into a puff of ash, therefore no longer bothering Sherlock anymore past the quick brush of the carpet with a hoover. “I am not subjecting you to any of my experimental serums, Sherlock,” Mycroft huffed eventually, turning his nose up at his brother’s childishness.

 

“Of course you are.”

 

“And what makes you think that?” The condescending tone touched an old wound along the side of Sherlock’s pride, a reminder of younger years where Sherlock still believed in the fanciful illusions of childhood fantasy. It had once been mistaken for interest, when Sherlock was seven and insistent of his pirate dreams, but Sherlock quickly developed rationality soon after and discovered what the voice truly meant.

 

Sherlock merely narrowed his eyes toward the figure across the room, unconvinced, and his brother rolled his eyes in the classic Holmes fashion.  

 

*

 

Eventually, Sherlock moved into the final stage: acceptance.

 

He accepted that whatever John was doing to his brain was becoming a part of life, and it was okay, because life, Sherlock decided, was much better with the doctor than without him.

 

Life was much better when John would watch rapt as Sherlock weaved music through the strings of a violin, compared to the silence that used to consume the empty space between notes.

 

Life was much better when John's random exclamations of 'amazing' and 'incredible' replaced the spaces usually filled with odd looks and mutterings of 'freak'.

 

Generally, life was much better with Doctor John Watson playing with his head than it ever had been without it. So if Sherlock's brain short circuited every time John did something particularly impressive, it became something of a good thing, Sherlock decided. A very very good thing, in fact. Sherlock's brain would always come back online eventually, usually in time to see the look on John's face when he noticed Sherlock's stuttering thoughts. It was usually something half way between smug and worshipping, as though not only had Sherlock pulled the sun back out of the sky and said 'remember when you proved this was round', but had also settled it inside John's pocket and said 'don't worry, I'll let you look after it for the both of us'. From what Sherlock could tell of the smaller man, he was convinced that Sherlock had the power of the universe at his fingertips, regardless of whether the detective had knowledge of it or not.

 

At least, Sherlock's brain usually came back online. Except, one time, it didn't, not immediately at least, not quick enough. 

 

*

 

"Sherlock," John began, because everything interesting these days began with John announcing his name with some particular tone of voice.

 

"Yes?" the detective in question replied, word dragged out slowly against the mould spread across the Petri dish.

 

"What's in the fridge?"

 

"Chicken chow mein," Sherlock said, with that tone of voice that said 'really, John, I thought you of all people would be above this kind of imbecilic behaviour'.  

 

"Yes, I can see that," John continued, still staring at the fridge as though it had just somehow solved the secrets of the universe whilst also baking a cake worthy of MasterChef using ingredients found only in the mythical land of Middle Earth. Sherlock thought it an entirely ridiculous over reaction. "But why is every shelf packed with the same thing?"

 

"It's not the same thing. If you would bother to look closely, you would see that they are all of a different brand, portion size and origin. For example, the top shelf is entirely self-branded supermarket chain ready meals. The cupboard to your left holds ready made jars, if you would care to check. I considered ordering in from all takeaways within a mile radius, but then reheating them may skew results, therefore I thought it best to save those for last and we can test fresh samples."

 

There was a pause that spread over the kitchen. Sherlock switched over the Petri dishes he was observing and John slowly closed the fridge and leant against it, arms crossed over his chest as he watched Sherlock closely.

 

"I have a feeling I'm going to regret this, even if it is better than finding several severed heads, but why?"

 

"Why what?" Sherlock asked as he picked up a pipet.

 

"Why did you stuff the fridge full of chicken chow mein and why have you put so much thought into it all?"

 

"Because we have already established that my favourite dish is Kung Pao chicken from the Oriental Aroma take away. I feel it is of the utmost importance that we now discover precisely which your favourite is, beyond merely the vague 'chow mein' label, because I can assure you that there are blatant differences that can dramatically change the experience of eating." Sherlock shivered in the memory of a particularly slimy excuse of noodles while John felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.  

 

"Let me get this straight. You have designed an entire experiment, which you have already thoroughly prepared for, apparently, for the simple purpose of finding out what my favourite thing is to eat?"

 

"Of course," Sherlock said, looking up from his experiment to meet John's narrowed gaze, "You knew what mine was. I have been trying to deduce it myself without help, but it is proving difficult since you always seem so fond of _everything_. Therefore, I am turning to the methods I know to aid my progress. I am confident that together we can come to a definitive conclusion."

 

John stared at his flatmate as he bent back down to his current experiment, pipet poised and curls drooping slightly over his forehead. Shaking his head, fond smile engraved into his mouth, John didn't even think as he turned back to the counter to start making tea, murmuring, "I can't believe it, I am so in love you."

 

Sherlock's pipet froze mid squeeze, a drop of clear liquid pooled at its end like a raindrop hooped at the end if a leaf, waiting to drop and seep into the ground. Similarly, the doctor froze, mind unable to compute how it had let the big secret slip so easily.

 

For a few seconds they stayed like this, John with his hands gripping the edge of the counter as though trying to hold on to reality, Sherlock with his mind sparking from a short circuit he wasn't quite sure he could come back from. It felt as though even his maintenance team was still standing around in the staffroom of his mind palace, staring out the window going 'did that really just happen'.

 

By the time Sherlock managed to blink and vaguely drag himself back into reality, he realised there was no longer anyone in the kitchen with him. Within the next second, the door to the upstairs bedroom slammed shut, and finally the lights of his palace flashed back on to reveal a party in the ballroom displaying a huge banner exclaiming 'John Loves Us!' It was as Sherlock entered their party that his thoughts felt it an apt time to let off the party poppers, leaving streamers of colour and light and John's sunshine to wash over Sherlock as he faced The Final Oh.

 

This Final Oh, paradoxically, found itself to be followed by a procession of oh's.

 

Oh, John Watson loves you. Oh, John was never using mind control on you. Oh, John was just as flummoxed as you. Oh, you must love John Watson too, because otherwise you would never use words such a flummoxed in any context, especially not the wrong one.

 

Because Sherlock Holmes was not flummoxed in any way. In fact, every thought in the brain of Sherlock Holmes had just aligned to the single most heart gushingly magnificent realisation:

 

Oh, you are undeniably, life-ruiningly, life-perfectingly, wonderfully, unimaginably, fascinatingly, addictivly, totally in love with John Watson, too.

 

And suddenly the amount of stupidity in the world didn't matter so much anymore. Lestrade could walk in the flat with the most delicious, confusing locked-room serial killer case to waft under his nose, and it wouldn't interest Sherlock in the slightest. No, instead the sun had begun to spin on its axis and every pun in the world was magically genius, because John was one flight of stairs away and John Loved Him.

 

The problem was, there was always that one dick at the party who hovered in the corner until it was bored and decided to ruin everything. Sherlock bumped into him as soon as he reached the short landing at the top of the stairs. It was as he wrapped his hand around the handle to John's room that reality soaked him with a bucket of cold water, spilling doubts into Sherlock's head like 'what if it really was a mistake' and 'what if John leaves because of this'.

 

John couldn't leave. That option had been unacceptable from the start.

 

So, once Sherlock had opened the door, he stood in the doorframe and stared at the opposite wall as opposed to staring at John who was burying himself face down in his pillows on the bed.

 

"John," Sherlock began, and then swallowed because apparently his throat was as irrationally nervous as he was, as though without John it would lose out on its regular supply of needed water. When John made no indication of acknowledgment, Sherlock chose to continue. "I don't know if what you said downstairs was a mistake. I don't know how... sincere you were being. I hope you are paying attention, because I just admitted that I didn't know something twice, so clearly this is as hard for me as it is for you. But, what I'm trying to get at is..." Sherlock bit his lip in frustration and glared at a scratch on the wall. "I am so in love with you, too. I think I have been for a while now, actually. I used to think it was a brain tumour, but I got it checked and apparently I'm tumour free, which was disturbing. And then I thought you were controlling my mind, and if you knew what I know about some of the activities they get up to in Mycroft's labs, you would know that's not as ridiculous as it sounds. However, it seems that situation is also not the case. Therefore, reviewing the facts, it seems I must be... in love with you. I understand if this was a mistake, in which case when I go back downstairs, I will continue to exist as myself and you will continue to exist as yourself and we will pretend that this entire fiasco never happened."

 

Sherlock waited in the silence, feeling like there should be more of a strong conclusion to his speech than such a weak ending, but he had nothing left to say and was not a man who was fond of wasted words. He risked a glance down at his flatmate – whom he loved, apparently – but John hadn't so much as shifted since Sherlock entered.

 

The detective took the blatant clue at face value, and left the room. The party in his head was somewhat dead now, after having started with such high hopes and crashed down so far. When the door clicked against the clasp, Sherlock felt it send a wrenching jolt through his chest like a webbing of veins beating suddenly out of tune with his heart.

 

Once he was downstairs again, Sherlock considered going back to his experiment, but found that all interest in the subject had evaporated into the same space as his and John's potential for a relationship. Instead, Sherlock buried himself inside the sounds of his violin, playing against the infuriatingly sunny day outside the window in such an out of tune manner that anyone would think the weather had personally offended him.

 

He felt the presence emerge in the doorway almost immediately as it appeared, and tried to subtly soften the playing so as to make it seem like there was less emotion leaking into the instrument. Eventually, he gave up playing altogether, and let the violin hang limply in his hand by his side.

 

“You found out you didn’t have a brain tumor,” John said slowly behind him, “and you found it _disturbing_?”

 

“Well,” Sherlock mumbled, staring at splotchy patch on the window to avoid facing the other man, “I was often experiencing mental failures at the most inopportune times, which was not something I _do_. I needed a logical explanation.”

 

“And the mind control?” John’s voice was closer now, as though the room was slowly pushing them together, or John was peeling the walls of the room away with him as he forced himself forward, cocooning them in a smaller space.

 

“Mycroft has a serum. I thought he may have… leant it to you.”

 

“Why would I take anything from Mycroft?”

 

Sherlock shrugged. “Perhaps I was finally becoming too difficult.”

 

The detective instinctively flinched as he felt a slight pressure press into the small of his back, only to turn and find that John had arrived directly behind him. There was something very small about him, Sherlock thought, nervous but not quite, in the same way a person feels giddy with fear before jumping into the seat of a rollercoaster.

 

John looked up at his friend, finding his mop of hair to be black against the framing glow of sunlight through the window, and thought of how he’d seen the same picture so many times before but this time it was so so different, because everything was different now. Sherlock’s hair was slightly thicker, slightly black, and ever so more tempting, and John, for the first time, didn’t stop his hand from pressing through the curls of the sunlight drenched hair. When the other man leant into the pressure, John kept his hand settled at the back of his neck, fiddling with the shorter tufts.

 

“You are a ridiculous man, Sherlock Holmes,” John began quietly, “but in the best way, I promise. You have never been and will never be too difficult for me, and the fact that you seriously think you could be is just… I know what you mean, about the tumour, I mean. I used to think it was normal, this total amazement I have for you – you shocked everyone, after all. But then I kind of… figured it out. Everyone else thinks your insistence with exploding everything in the kitchen and your morbid obsessions are all shocking, a disturbing kind of shocking, but… you don’t surprise me, anymore, Sherlock Holmes. I thought I was wrong for finding all that endearing. But then, thinking it through, I guess that’s just how it works, when you love someone. And, I’m probably pretty stuffed then, because I love you.”

 

“I don’t understand,” Sherlock said suddenly, quietly, an accident of honest breath. But it was true – how could someone drowning in so much brilliance as John Watson settle for the madness of the likes of him.

 

Frowning, John said, “Maybe you do have a tumour. You’re brain doesn’t seem like it’s up to its usual standard today.”

 

“Already checked, remember?” Sherlock continued, still whispering as John seemed to melt toward him like a puddle of nervous bravery, “It’s just you.”

 

“Just me?” The moment was glass, and John felt as if even a hint of volume would shatter this chance they had created from nothing but a mistake.

 

A sort of sweet but also smug smile grew in the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, the kind of smile that had always been reserved just for John, the doctor realised. “Just you.”

 

The smile wasn’t given the chance to flourish fully into the recognisable grin John loved. Instead, John leaped forward off the edge of the drop and pressed his lips up to Sherlock’s, leading to a pause that burst through the flat like the silence following a crescendo; it exposed the ringing in their ears and the fuzzy feeling through every nerve while being completely engrossing, a feeling that sent a torrent of humming calm through every bone, all pulsing from the single point of contact between the two closest friends.

 

For once, it was not an ‘ _oh_ ’. It was not a surprise. It was not a shock. John hadn’t shaken Sherlock out of every lesson and fact and general principle of the universe. As far as the detective was concerned, _this_ was the universe. This final flooding relief of perfection. This final supernova. This final sun. This final constellation, translated and dissected and yet still unnamable.

 

Sherlock knew many things, and among them he knew that as soon as you named something, it became physical, it became _something_ , and all something’s could be lost.

 

So they didn’t name it.

 

Instead, in the place of a name, in the place of explanations and problems and worries, they pulled each other closer, one hand beneath a suit jacket, another slipped beyond the waistband of jeans, all the while mouths and tongues and thoughts intertwined in only the way something nameless could be so totally honest.

 

Later, John further proved how the best _oh_ ’s came not from surprise or impressive actions, but from the feeling of someone who knows you openly and completely, pressing into _that_ spot during _that_ time in the fuzzy darkness beneath bed sheets that is reserved for only the closest of friends and lovers.

 

Afterwards, the two lay wrapped around each other, thin sheets tangled between Sherlock’s bony limbs and John’s hair puffed out against the pillow. Sherlock’s curls were crushed against the skin of the soldier’s chest, while his finger traced patterns into the light fluffing of chest hair, and Sherlock thought of everything that had happened that day, the unexpected turns and the unexpected words, and the unexpectedness of the emotion swirling and bursting and fizzing in his chest light fireworks on the Thames.

 

“I may not surprise you,” he whispered into the night, voice ghosting like the gentle fog of a summer morning, “but you surprise me, John Watson.” 


End file.
